Part 2 - Meeting Big Tree and De Rock

Day Three

My tent beside the hut at the back of my hosts parcel

I woke after a wonderfully deep sleep and enjoyed the luxury of brushing my hair in privacy without and audience because I had hidden my tent at the back of my host’s parcel away from all the others for that very reason. Today I needed to wash my clothes and we had a meeting with the Local Development Committee at 2pm. Big List!

I had a breakfast of oranges (I prefer to call them greens), bananas, coconut, dough balls (called banyans) and a granola bar that had come all the way with me from Austria. Then I returned to my tent and spied a tiny 2cm long worm type larvae. I threw it out of the tent. Upon further inspection worms were found under every stationary object in the tent. At least 100 were exiled but I still wasn’t sure of their source. I soon pinned it down to the only thing possible though, the four dried fish that Tristan had so kindly bought for me at the market in Inongo before I left (and upon spying them my gardener commented ‘you guys eat those?’). The fish were also unceremoniously evacuated.

Mambo, with the remains of the Tondolo at her feet

I washed my clothes without event at the house where the animateurs had camped previously as it was beside a well, thus easier to collect water. The locals were shocked that the white person/chief was able to wash her own clothes, evidently they had only met the type of whites that prove themselves to be completely useless in all practical areas. When I returned to the pyote  (palm-frond open-air shade) after hanging my clothes where Anne (the mama of the house) and the rest of the family were I discovered we had a new member of our group, Da Rock, a baby Red-tailed monkey. I picked Da Rock up and began petting him and he collapsed with squeaks of ecstasy into my chest. I am in love. We spent a blissful few hours there chatting, playing with De Rock and eating tondlo, a wonderfully sour fruit that grows naturally in the forest. I enjoyed sharing ‘sour’ faces with their youngest girl Mambo. Sometimes language isn’t necessary. 

 

My next task was to get drinking water from the spring (source in French). The village of 2,000 has one beautiful source for all its drinking water. I asked the middle daughter, Noella, to come with me so I could stock up my canteen. The sourse is beautifully clear and there are strict rules in the village for not using it for any other reason. However, it is generally children who collect water for their families and if their hands or canteens are contaminated it can put the entire village at risk of sickness. This happens in many villages in our project area every year, especially  during times in the rainy season when water from all areas mixes and run over. In fact that very evening the Capita (mayor) of the village was walking around the village and announcing the news. One of the items was that people were washing dishes in the source and that this was not allowed.  I haven’t been able to be very prudent with my consumption of food and water on this trip. No boiling, no washing my own pots. But, so far so good, luckily I have been here for 2 years and my stomach was pretty tough to start with anyway. 

At the spring with some ladies also collecting water

We spent the rest of the afternoon with the local development committee teaching them about climate change, the project and how they can begin to steward development in their own village. There were many many questions which is my favorite part. I always take care to have the questions translated from Lingala to French if I don’t understand because what the locals want to know is so important to me.

 After a lovely meal of boiled snake fish and kwanga I fell asleep in my tent content with the sounds of real African drums this time.

Day Four

Posing with my corbiel beside Mama Anne

I woke up with a start this morning because I remembered I had a date at 7am with Mama Anne to go to her field with her. When I arrived at her house she had a nice small basket for me to wear and a hoe for me to help her with. I donned the corbeil (basket) much to the amusement of her, my team, the neighbors and pretty much any one else around. We walked to her field with an entourage of women and thankfully it wasn’t much further than the edge of the village because the corbeil was cutting in to my shoulders already even though it only contained a hoe and my water. Every house-hold we passed said ‘the mundele is going to work in the field?’ they were shocked and amused. When we arrived in the field all of the women set to work to show me how to plant cassava. Its pretty basic, you simply hoe a mound and ram a piece of the old cassava stalk in to it. Easiest thing I’ve ever planted. Then you wait a year and you have a cassava tuber. I can see why it is their staple. In all their exuberance to show me how to do it we were clearing and planting fast. I asked Mama Anne if it was always like this: one day they go to one field and all help out and the next day they go to another’s? She said no, they are all here because of you. So then I laughed and said, well you are getting quite a lot of work done here then aren’t you? And she said yes, I really am.

The women all eager to demonstrate and be on film. If you look closely you can see the cassava stalks that have been planted in each mound

The women sang and hoe’d and we generally had a great time. Especially once I brought out my camera and started filming them. Everyone wanted to be on camera. A new rule was made that you could only be on camera if you were working. There was soon a shortage of tools.

On the way back she asked if I wanted to carry wood and I said yes of course. So I put my corbeil on and they loaded me up. It was about ¼ the load I see women carrying but it was super heavy and the straps were cutting in to my arms something fierce. I wonder what kind of toll that does to their bodies over the years. You would never see a man carrying a corbeil. That is woman’s work.

So we walked back in to town and the woman were singing and clapping their hands around me so we made quite the scene. When we finally arrived at the house we had a little dance party and then that was that. I have been having people come up to me now for the last 36 hours since and say “I heard you went to the fields”? and when I say yes they burst out in a big smile. *At the end of the week when I rode back through the villages I found that the news of me going to the field had reached as far as the lake 60km away that very same day.

We got word that the chief had come back from a trip he had left on because he had heard we were in his village. I was formally introduced and we had Lesolo, I also learned that his name meant Tall Tree, which his clan was particularly proud of as he owns one of the largest and sacred forests in the region. We have not had the easiest history working with the village and in fact two of our foresters were chased out of the village with guns two years ago, so it was an important meeting. The dude was so cool. His outfit was made out of the traditional material chiefs outfits are made of (red acrylic blankets with anything from Mickey Mouse to Summer flowers) but this time it was different, the shirt was cut in to a proper collar with a zipper and a big picket. But the best part was that he was wearing a cowboy hat exactly like the one I used to have. We had a great chat and he turned out to be just as wonderful as his hat.

Chief Tall Tree of Ilee

I took this the next day when it wasn't thundering and showering out

That night I had to wash my hair so I asked Mama Anne if she could boil water for me. I showered as the sun set and a thunder and lightening storm rolled in. The shower stalls are never completely private and usually have holes and/or you can see over the top. This one had both so the neighbor ladies got a lovely view of me lathering my hair. So worth it even with an audience and in the rain.

A Bike Ride in the Jungle

Day One

We left about an hour later than originally planned, which is pretty good for here. Kitoko was not very happy to realize I was leaving on the boat and she wasn’t coming with me. She followed the boat in to the water and then raced along the shore in the direction of the boat after we took off. She really has become attached to me lately.

So we arrived in Mpongoboli and loaded up the bikes. I’m always so amazed how they can attach so much baggage with just some vines as twine. I had the most stuff of course. Even though I had packed and repacked to take as little as possible.

 

We rolled on the same path we had a few months before with the WWF visitors we took to Bakele, over all the cool old bridges whose foundations are left over from Belgium times.

Bridges left over from the Belgians. You can see a boat under me. 

We arrived in Bakele without incident aside from deciding that wearing runners was a waste of time due to all the creeks we had to cross that were at least ankle deep. In Bakele we waited a long time for the local Animateurs (our community facilitators) to finish packing and join us. Although they had known for days we were going on a trip at this time it still took them 2 hours to be ready. Typical. While we waited we had ‘lesolo’ (exchange of news) with the chief, fixed our bikes, and ate oranges, which are actually green.

After Bakele we rode through 16km of forests, crops of cassava, mais and plantains and big beautiful blond savannahs that contrary to ones preconceived notions of a savanna are inundated, or, technically, semi-inundated, with water. So we walked our bikes through a small path that had been worn down over years of use and through big patches of mud that sucked my sandals off. There were also some welcomed sections of dry where it was better to ride so the pedals didn’t bang into your legs on the narrow trail but it was not always possible because the edges of the path kept bumping into your pedals and knocking you off kilter. A fine balance.

Arriving back in the forest with its open paths and swampy bridges was a welcome change.

We finally reached the village of Lobalu where we found the rest of the crew that we had organized to meet us there. We rested in front of the traditional chiefs house, well actually they call it a palace. Interestingly they plant these very original looking yucca like trees around the palace so it is easy to see from far away. When the chief dies the palace is abandoned and a new one built. We rode through new villages, new savannas and met wit another chief and had the lesolo. As the sky was going pink we had 4 more km to go and we rushed. At this point I was feeling very weak as we had rode over 40km all day in the humidity and heat. We arrived well after dark but all in tact.

We met everyone else at the camp resting but I knew I couldn’t sit down. I had to get my tent up or I would be sleeping in the dirt covered I mud and sweat. A lovely mama heated a bucket of water for me on a 3-stone fire (logs) and took me to her palm frond shower stall only to find that it had fallen down in the wind. We proceeded to the neighbors stall that required quite a few vines to be pulled out of it before I could enter. But regardless, it was an awesome bucket shower.

I attempted to sit with the others and make small talk but my blow up pillow was calling to me and I fell asleep on it by 8pm.

Day Two

I slept without waking until 4am and got up at 6am with a circle of kids surrounding my tent. I felt like a new woman.

Sunday is the only time where most of the village doesn’t go to the forest or the fields to work so there was quite the audience present to watch me brush my hair, eat and orange, brush my teeth and take down my tent. Every time I opened my bag or my tent door the entire crowd would lean in to see what I was going to pull out next. Sometimes it gets frustrating to be started at like and animal, especially when you are tired, or on hot days when they block the airflow (and children fart), but there isn’t much you can do about it.

Thunder and lightening were threatening in with sincerity on the horizon so we waited for most of the morning in weather that was so cool I went to get my cardigan. We ate what is actually one of my first Congolese meals since the first month I was here two years ago and I learned not to eat them any more and restricted my diet to rice and tomatoes. It actually wasn’t too bad. We also ate this fruit, Safu, that looks like a big purple pill. You boil them and eat them with salt. I had also decided I didn’t like these my first month in Congo but this time thought they were pretty good. It’s funny how your perspective changes.

So we finally decided the storm wasn’t going to come around 1pm when it was nice and hot for riding through km after km of flooded savannah. It was about this time that I remembered I had forgotten my deodorant. Fun times. The entire area of this part of the Congo basin, the river’s ancient flood plane, is only at its highest 300m above sea level, so when you get to areas that are lower than this they flood in the wet seasons between October and June. Savanna and forest alike are inundated for half the year.

I was constantly amazed at the variety and abundance of butterflies along the route. Blue, purple, orange, white and I even saw a bright green one which struck me as a strange colour for a butterfly. I came across some that had perished in the mud so I pressed them in my book.

After 17km we came to the town of Olynge Oye that started as a farm 30 years ago. I loved its name when I found out that it means: Come and stay if you want to stay, go if you don’t.

After passing the welcoming village we quickly came across our team of chainsaw bearing road clearing men (not wearing their expensive and imported safety gear). We had sent them 2 days ahead of us to clear the road because trees, huge trees, regularly fall on the path and make passing very difficult as you have to lift your bike over or under trees or push through the forest to get around them. I quickly learned how essential they were because now that we had passed them we were left to lift our bicycles and packs over these massive trees.

 
When we finally rolled in to Ilee, our final destination and over 60km of road later, the welcome was well worth the effort. We rode straight to the palace and were met by all the dignitaries (except for the chief who was away on a voyage to Kinshasa) with very un-Congolese speed. Children crowded around the hanger to see their first ever mundele (white person) and all the men exclaimed how touched they were that this mundele makasi (strong white person) had made such a hard journey just for them. After another dinner of boiled fish and Kwanga I went to my tent thinking “if only there were drums” and then they started. Ah, I thought , how perfect, and then I thought, but wait, those arent’ African Djembe type drums. Those are marching band drums. Sure enough I saw them in the morning, the visiting Catholic Band from a neighboring villages church marching out of town flutes and all.

Believable!

Sometime early this year, we got tired of saying “unbelievable” to all the crazy, weird, messed up head scratchers we were seeing pretty much every day.  After that we simply decided that’s just the way things are in Congo, and rather than being "unbelievable", these things stared to just become plain “believable”.  Here are a few gems we've especially enjoyed, hope you do too.

Can't get the motorcycle wet or it won't start...

Believable!

Every Friday hundreds of children litter the streets for the day to cut grass. Sounds harmless enough, until you see that each unsupervised child aged from about 10 years old down to 4 - is holding a machete the size of our dog for the days project.

Child Labour Day - Every Friday.   

Believable!

Two hours after having a beer, my hands still smell like gas...

Beleivable!

English class is held at the local University once a week.  9am – 4pm. One day it rained for under an hour at around 10am just before we were going to meet with the class at 11:00.  Everyone became “stuck” at the University.  When the rain stopped, everyone was sent home for the rest of the day because it was raining and they didn’t want to get stuck at the University...wait...whaaat?

Of course when we arrived at 11:00am the entire University had gone home for the day due to rain.

Believable!    

(we laugh about this mentality every time it rains here and think of what would happen if everyone adopted the "it's raining so I can't go to work today" policy back home in Vancouver)

Have to keep the first aid kits zap strapped shut otherwise employees will  sell all the supplies and ask for more first aid kits....again

Believable!

A line of motorcycles driving up and down the street for two days honking in celebration.  There was what looked like a wedding reception set up at a local bar for a large three day celebration.  It was the talk of the town.  The reason?  One person graduated University...

Believable!  (but in a good way...it’s nice to see such praise for higher education in a place that has very few even finishing grade school)

Jenn: “Why did they cut down the tree in front of the office? It was such a nice tree and it provided the guys working there with shade.”

Translator: “Because blacks don’t like trees.  Only whites like trees. ”

Believable!

About a hundred police officers marched the streets today.  Up, down, and back again.  They had arrived from all of the largest towns in the region, some traveling for days by foot and boat.  They came because a prominent government official was flying in from the big city to meet with them and pay them for the first time in 6 months.

He didn't show up so now there are now an extra hundred plus police stranded here because they haven’t been paid in 6 months and can’t afford to get back to their towns and villages...

Believable!

That’s all for now – stay tuned for future editions of “Believable”